Many applications provide a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows a user to interact with the applications. An application GUI can include any number of different GUI components (e.g., widgets, controls) for outputting information and/or receiving information from a user. Examples of such GUI components include menus for listing a set of selectable commands, selectable buttons for performing an action, display windows for displaying information and/or receiving user input, text boxes for receiving text input, etc.
A slider control is one type of GUI component for receiving input values from a user. Typically, a slider control has two components: a sliding region (e.g., a “track”) and a slider (e.g., a “thumb”). A slider moves along the sliding region on a single axis. A user can select a value from a defined range of values by moving the slider along the sliding region. The values in the defined range of values are associated with different positions along the sliding region and can be indicated (e.g., using a tick mark) along the sliding region. As such, a user can select different values in the range of values by moving the slider to the different positions along the sliding region (or selecting an indicated value along the sliding region).
The slider control can be used to control different functionalities of different applications. For example, sliding control can be used to control a volume level for a media playback application, a contrast value of an image for an image-editing application, a screen resolution of a monitor for a system preference settings application, etc.
Some slider controls also include a text box that displays the current selected value. Such slider controls provide another way for a user to set a value for the slider control by allowing the user to type a value directly into the text box. When a user types a value directly into the text box, the slider automatically moves to the position along the sliding region that corresponds to the value. Likewise, when a user selects a value by moving the slider to a position along the sliding region, the text box displays the selected value.
A slider control usually controls a single operation in an application. For instance, a color correction component of a media editing application usually employs multiple different slider controls that each performs a different operation on media (e.g., an image, a video clip) being edited. To perform multiple different color correction operations, multiple adjustments to multiple different slider controls must be made. Thus, performing color corrections can be tedious and complex for a user of such application. Moreover, a user of such application may have difficulty gauging the adjustments that are made to the media being edited due to the overwhelming number of slider controls.